


Black Ink

by Adina



Category: Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea – Barbara Demick
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:05:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adina/pseuds/Adina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paper and ink are not the same as pixels.</p><p>(I'm not your assigned writer, but I hope you like this.  It...didn't quite come out like I expected.  I'd like to discuss the book with you after the reveal.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Ink

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jae Gecko (jaegecko)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaegecko/gifts).



The letter arrived a few days after the reporter returned to America. It was written on bright white paper, smoother and finer than even Jun-sang had been able to get in Pyongyang, but the writing was achingly familiar. Mi-ran laid it out on the table in front of her, moving aside her son’s cartoon-decorated breakfast bowl to make room.

> It’s silly, I suppose, to write this when I could text or even call you, but somehow a blank sheet of paper is less intimidating than my phone. 
> 
> I’m studying pharmacy now. It’s a good job, always in demand, and pays well. My father would be proud of me, I think, if it were still possible for him to be proud of anything I’ve done. I’m not sure yet what a pharmacist does, exactly--they don’t have to pick the herbs themselves or even make the pills, that’s all done by factories in America and Japan and Germany--but I suppose that’s what I’m in school to learn.
> 
> All the other students are so young. I don’t think we were ever that young.

Mi-ran stared at the letter and then took a piece of paper out of the printer. It was the only paper she had; even her class notes where written on the computer.

> My son starts school next week. He’s so tall! He’s going to be a giant before he stops growing. His sister is three years younger but already she’s taller and stronger than the biggest of children in my class. Before, I mean.  
> 

She stretched forth her hand, ready to crumple up the aborted letter, but stopped.

> I didn’t mean to write that. It’s easy--too easy--to write things on paper, to you, that my husband doesn’t understand and my mother doesn’t want to hear. 
> 
> Pharmacy school sounds like a smart choice. But you were always the smart one.

A week later there was another letter. No one burned the mail to stay warm on the train here, not that it took a train to get a letter across Seoul. Her husband brought it in with the bills and the flyers, handing it to her with only a faint question in his eyes. She waited until he left for work the next morning to open it.

> There’s a woman in my English class--we have to learn English for all the medical words. _Hemodialysis, intravenous, sublingual--_

The romaja of the last three words was shaky, lacking the smooth confidence of the hangul preceding it, as if--indeed, as if he had only learned to write the Roman characters that year.

> The woman in my class is from Chongjin too. Almost the first thing she saw in China was a bowl of meat and white rice--set on the floor for the dog. In Pyongyang I ate almost as well as that dog, but I had no idea how lucky I was until I returned to Chongjin. 
> 
> _In the dark I can hold your hand_  
>  _and whisper secrets that cannot see the light of day._  
>  _But the deepest secrets shrink from the glare_  
>  _of the distant stars._  
> 

It was never dark in Seoul. Even with the lights off in the apartment at night the streetlights seeped through the curtains. The very sky glowed with an unearthly orange sheen. There was no hiding in the dark here. Nothing to hide, surely.

She meant to reply, but her daughter spilled her juice and needed her clothes changed and then it was time to take her to daycare. That evening her husband was home and the children needed dinner and her son needed help with his schoolwork. (Never too early to get ahead in school, her husband insisted.) The next day was the weekend and Monday was busy and her mother-in-law’s birthday was on Wednesday. Any letter would have had to start with an apology and explanation for being so late--it was easier and easier to let it slide another day, another week. What did she have to say to Jun-sang anyway?

The third letter came more than a month after the second--she had long since forgotten even to berate herself for not answering.

> This place is so strange. I have to take a history class for pharmacy school, which...didn’t really surprise me. I thought I knew what to expect--lots of proud history of Hanguk and capitalism and pro-Yankee bastards--and there was some of that. But the professor actually talked about the crushing poverty before and after the war. One of the other students said that they were still luckier than those starving in the north. But we weren’t starving in the north _then_! They were starving in the south and in China, but the north had food, if not always rice.
> 
> I was still mad about that when I wrote my paper, so I wrote it about the South’s use of conscription during the war and their treatment of displaced civilians. I regretted it almost as soon as I turned it in, and even more when the professor told me a few days later to come to his office after class!
> 
> He liked the paper. He thought it was really good.

It was easy to write back that time, or at least easier to start.

> I remember the first time that happened to me. We were reading a book and it was so stupid! I...sort of said so in class, but not really. I mean, not rudely. But the professor looked at me and I knew that he knew what I really thought. Afterwards he said I had a unique viewpoint and valuable insight.

The letter was still unfinished, unsent, shoved into a drawer when her husband left for work two days later. She pulled it out.

> It's supposed to be easier here, better, simpler. But it’s not. My mother-in-law wants me to stay home with my children, her grandchildren. _Her son_ makes good money and doesn’t need his wife working and I’m only fooling around with graduate school and daycare is so expensive and children need their mother and what kind of mother am I anyway? My husband doesn’t say he agrees with her but he doesn’t say he disagrees either.

Two days later her cellphone rang just after lunch.

“Mi-ran?” 

“Jun-sang.” No one else said her name with quite that accent, quite that level of uncertainty and affection.

“Are you...okay?” The American word sounded strange on his tongue even though all her friends used it.

“I--yes--of course,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You sounded upset in your letter.” 

She had regretted sending it almost as soon as it had left her hands. “I overreacted. It was nothing.” She tried to laugh, but it sounded forced even to her own ears. “I’m lucky to be here, lucky to have...everything I have. I was just being stupid.”

“Yes, of course. Not that you’re stupid, of course.” He hesitated a long moment. “I’m glad. That everything’s good, I mean.”

The silent felt awkward, threatening in a way that it never had before. “How...how are your classes?” she asked.

“Good. They’re...good.”

“Good. I’m glad. I’m sure...I mean, you’re doing well, right?” He had always done well, would always do well; he was smart that way.

“Oh. Yes, of course,” he said, though he didn’t sound as confident as he once had. “I--I hope I didn’t interrupt anything. Calling like this.”

“No, of course not. I’m always happy to talk to you.” Not that she knew what to say anymore. 

“Good. I’m...happy to talk to you too.” The silence threatened to stretch out again. “I...should let you go. I’m sure you’re busy.”

“I--thanks for calling.”

“Bye.”

She sat with a blank sheet of paper in front of her.

> Sometimes I wonder, did we ever have anything to say to one another? Or did we just have things we needed to say--and no one else to say them to?

She never sent it.


End file.
